At home with the ‘dirty duchess’

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This impeccable Mayfair mansion was the scene of scandal in high places

It’s 1963, the 11th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II and the average
house price is £3,160. Although the phrase “permissive society” has yet to
be coined, there is much talk of a new, more relaxed morality and the
details of the divorce of the occupants of 48 Upper Grosvenor Street in
Mayfair — anything but the average house — indicate that the Sixties have
been swinging for a while among the gentry.

So lurid is the evidence of the encounters at the home that you understand why
Philip Larkin later declared that 1963 was the year that “sexual intercourse